Abstract

This thesis describes model checking techniques for protocols arising in quantum information
theory and quantum cryptography. We discuss the theory and implementation of a practical
model checker, QMC, for quantum protocols. In our framework, we assume that the quantum
operations performed in a protocol are restricted to those within the stabilizer formalism; while
this particular set of operations is not universal for quantum computation, it allows us to develop
models of several useful protocols as well as of systems involving both classical and quantum
information processing. We detail the syntax, semantics and type system of QMC’s modelling
language, the logic QCTL which is used for verification, and the verification algorithms that have
been implemented in the tool. We demonstrate our techniques with applications to a number of
case studies.